Questlove’s eagerly anticipated Earth, Wind & Fire documentary will premiere this summer as the opening presentation for New York’s Tribeca Festival. Settling off the 25th anniversary of the venerable film festival, Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial VS That’s the Weight of the World) will screen on June 3, paired with a performance from the legendary R&B group alongside The Roots at New York’s Beacon Theater.

Earth, Wind & Fire examines the towering legacy of the band with unprecedented access to the group’s archives of visual, audio, and written artifacts from their heyday, as well as the encouragement of the estate of Maurice White and the band. Queslove’s follow-up to the Academy Award-winning Summer of Soul and Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius), his 2025 Sly Stone documentary, applies his distinctive lens on the cultural impact of iconic music to illustrate how the group’s thoroughly honed artistic and philosophical ideals informed their unforgettable records.

“Having been baptized in the Afrocentric joy river of this powerhouse unit, I’ve learned about them, I’ve learned about us & more importantly, I’ve learned and rediscovered myself in the process,” Ahmir “Questlove” Thomspon shared in a release with the film’s announcement in 2024. “I’m so excited to be part of the process of preserving their positive but VERY vulnerable and real story of Soul, Self & Struggle.”

While renowned for such classics as “September,” “Let’s Groove,” “Shining Star,” “That’s the Way of the World” and many more, Earth, Wind & Fire’s intricate genre-bending sound and ideological commitment to resilient positivity as a therapy to the Black community were just as vital to their chart-topping success. Questlove’s account centers on the vision of the late frontman White, while attending to other resonant themes, including the group’s pioneering imaginings of Afrofuturism and influential spiritual messaging.

Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial VS That’s the Weight of the World) is produced by Questlove, Dave Sirulnick and Samantha Grogin of RadicalMedia, Kinfolk Management’s Arron Saxe and Broken Halo Entertainment’s KB White, the son of Earth, Wind & Fire’s bandleader. The film will debut on HBO in the United States and will be available for streaming on HBO Max later this year.

Learn more about this year’s Tribeca Festival at tribecafilm.com.